Valero
VALERO
VALERO , Sephardi family in *Jerusalem. jacob (d. 1880) was a banker. Born in Constantinople, he settled in Ereẓ Israel in 1835. In 1848 he founded the first modern bank in Jerusalem to have contacts with European capitals. He was a leader of the Jerusalem Sephardi community. His son Ḥayyim aharon (1845–1923) was born in Jerusalem and from 1875 acted as the director of the bank his father had founded. He expanded the bank which became the agent for foreign royalty who visited the Holy Land. He was also the agent for the Russian government, which purchased the Russian Compound in the center of the Holy City. He contributed to the unification of the Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities in Jerusalem. His son joseph moshe (1882–1945) was born in Jerusalem and studied law in Switzerland, where he was active in Zionist student groups. On his return to Palestine, he practiced law in Jerusalem and became a magistrate there. From 1929 he was a district court judge in Jerusalem. He was one of the three trial judges in the *Arlosoroff murder trial (1934), and he alone vindicated the accused completely. He was also active in public institutions and the Sephardi community.
[Benjamin Jaffe]